Utility companies (for example, electric, gas, and water) are increasingly implementing usage meters that can wirelessly transmit usage data. The wireless networks for utility companies are called Smart Utility Networks (SUN). There are multiple organizations developing standards for SUN. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has a standard (IEEE 802.15.4g) for SUN. The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) also has a standard (TR-51) for SUN.
Meters on a customer's premises may wirelessly transmit data to a data collection point operated for a utility company. The data collection point may then be connected by fiber, copper wire, or wirelessly to a central office. Usage data may be hopped from meter to meter in a mesh configuration until it reaches the data collection point. A mesh configuration may be appropriate for an urban or suburban area with a high density of meters. Alternatively, usage data may be sent directly from each meter to the data collection point (star configuration). A star configuration may be appropriate for rural environments where the density of meters is so low that there may not be a convenient neighbor to use as an intermediate hop. There may also be mixtures of star and mesh configurations.
The Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model for networks divides communications functionality into seven logical layers. The lowest layer, called the Physical Layer (PHY) defines the conversion between the representation of digital data and the corresponding signals transmitted over the physical communications channel, and also the structure of the data frames. There are multiple PHY's supported by the SUN standards. In particular, in one embodiment, all legacy devices in a SUN communicate using Frequency Shift Keying (FSK). Accordingly, for the particular embodiment, in a mesh configuration, all devices must be able to receive FSK modulated data with the specified data frame structure. There is a need for improved SUN receivers for receiving FSK modulated data.